Skip to main content
Main

Turkey Boned and Forced

A boned turkey stuffed with sausage meat, then roasted with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Turkey Boned and Forced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turkey

  1. Remove all bones from the turkey except for the pinions, without opening the bird.

  2. Shape the turkey and fill it completely with sausage meat, starting with the legs and wings.

  3. Plump the breast and restore the turkey's original form, then tie it securely at both ends and the legs.

  4. Insert a skewer through the ends and body, and another through the wings and body.

  5. Lay twine over the back, passing it under the first skewer ends, crossing it in the center, and under the second skewer ends.

  6. Fasten the twine at the neck to keep the pinions in place.

Roast

  1. Flour the turkey well and place it far from the fire until heated through.

  2. Baste it continuously with butter while roasting for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Turkey + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together540 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turkey + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together963 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sausage meat
Fills the bird and adds rich, savoury flavour and moisture to the stuffing.
Butter
Basting fat that carries flavour and promotes golden browning on the skin.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the skin brown and crisp during roasting.

The step that matters

Roasting far from the fire. Placing the stuffed bird far from the heat lets the dense filling heat through gradually, so the outside does not overbrown or dry before the centre is cooked.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More stuffed turkey recipes

Oyster 24Chestnut 8 See all 65 →

You might also like

Turkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes